Almost There

Today my buddy and i interviewed 2 patients. The one i interviewed took about an hour and my buddy took about 1hr 45mins.

Hard core eh?

So anyway, we were talking to this lady with depressive symptoms and somewhere along the line i felt that she had a hint of Borderline Personality Disorder.

I was right! Woohoo!!! *Damn proud of myself for being able to pick a personality disorder*

The bad part is, now i'm unsure if she actually satisfies the criteria for Major Depressive Disorder. The 2 have lots of symptoms that over lap and a significant part of it involves whether her suicide attempt was just a disguised self-harming episode intended to draw attention or manipulate those around her.

Confusion.

On another level, one of the senior registrars said that i should try to sit down and listen to a patient with BPD tell me about their history of sexual assault (a huge percentage of BPD patients had that unfortunate experience). Because, it's difficult to stomach and even harder for them to talk about. Check.

She told us that she felt really comfortable talking to us about it at the conclusion of the interview. *Glowing with pride* But, thinking about it objectively, she's probably just idealising us. If only it were true.